Quantumcat

It depends on which hands the robot chooses to simulate with. At each decision, the robot generates some number of hands (50? not sure) that are consistent with the bidding and cards played thus far. It then performs double-dummy analysis on each of those hands, working out which play gives the highest average score (at IMPs) or the best likelihood of a good score (MPs) {this is explained better in other people's posts about IMPs and MPs robot play} across all the hands. Since he has the same cards and bidding in both of your situations (playing your cards in a different order), it will only be the particular simulations he chose that change what he does. {I don;t believe card order matters to the robot at all, he ignores your signals for example} I think if you choose a faster robot, the number of simulations is smaller, so you get more random results (e.g. if he simulates five hands and two of them have you with a void, he might try to give you a ruff, even if there is no real indication you have a void. If he simulates 50 hands then if five of them have a void that won't sway the resulting play as much). With slow robots they should choose the same play most of the time (since the simulations they each choose will have a lot of overlap) but with a large number of robots facing the same decision, the bell curve suggests there will be a small number of robots who choose hands to simulate that have little overlap to the rest of the crowd, causing their plays to differ.

Check the title of the tournament. The human declares tournaments are labelled as such.

No they don't! My GIB partner recently played a perfect elimination, and was beaten by his GIB opponent who performed a Crocodile Coup to prevent his partner being endplayed. In another, I was declaring, and knew I would need an endplay later, so tried to cash an ace early (trick 2) so the GIBs wouldn't know to throw away their doubleton honour, as they might if I do it later. Guess what the GIB did - he stuck his doubleton king in, in second seat. What a champion! Do you call that playing badly? I have seen them perform many other excellent plays that even experts might make a mistake with. When they get a bad result, it can easily be because they made a correct play which happened to fail in that situation, when everyone else did the "natural" or "obvious" thing, which turned out to be right.

Only based on what people who I trust have told me. I have never played it, and am only familiar with its basics. Peter is the player I respect the most above all other bridge players, and if he thinks it is a good system, I guess I should believe him, and do some more reading on it. Has he voluntarily played it with anyone besides Klinger, though?

The Power system isn't very good. And Drury uses one bid to show all good hands, not wasting room, which is hardly needed anyway (responder either bids the major, or a new suit or NT to show clubs, and has a tight range so opener won't need much room to find the right spot).

I learned rubensohl when I first learned to play, and also think it excellent, however hardly anyone I came across had heard of it so I stopped asking if new partners wanted to play it, thinking it just a quirk of my teacher. You can show invitational hands too; if you could have bid your suit at the 2-level then transferring shows at least an invitation. If you couldn't, then transferring is either weak or gameforce. You can play it over a 2♣ overcall as well, as long as it shows a particular suit.

Here you'd get into trouble not offering each opponent a copy of your correct CC at the beginning of a match. I guess all you can do is force yourself into the habit of asking for it, and if they don't have one, telling the director. The rules are definitely enforced here - once I came to a pairs event with only one CC. Our first opponents complained to the director who made us use the match time to fill out a new one.

2h - simple preference is the default action if you have nothing better to do. If you always raise with 3 card support, then you know pard does not have 12-14 with 3 card spade support, and if he has about 15-17 with 3 card support he will bid 2s after your simple preference.

Pass. If pard had about 16 hcp and 3 hearts he might have made a support double. There isnt any way to bid something to play, 3D and 3H both sound invitational. Also, if playing weak jump shifts I think they should be saved for hands where all your points are in your suit - eg xxx KJxxxx x xxx. Then when pard has a good hand he is better placed to decide if game might make.

You can't ever claim against robots.

Same at my club - when they have an opening hand, they feel they MUST bid, and if they have nothing to overcall they double. So usually they either have lots of cards in our opened suit, or a takeout double. It's so annoying when their pard bids a suit, and they happen to have support for it - they have one or two cards in the other unbid suits (and four or five in ours) but four cards in the one their pard bid. However, it's great in the sense that when their pard has a six-card suit, they don't feel comfortable bidding it at a high level (in case there is only singleton support), so we usually get away with murder.

Thanks, that was quite useful.

I also played for money for a while as a student, at a large club which had a few members who were either really old and senile and yucky or just very unpleasant to play with so they couldn't find partners. They would give me some pocket money in exchange for a pleasant game with a nice young girl :-) I think my rate was about a third or a quarter of the next lowest ranked pro who played at that club. A fantastic way to make a few dollars. You just have to live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney where the rich housewives are (or equivalent - from watching movies, would that be Manhattan in NY?), and be able to be nice and cheerful even to yucky people. Don't have to be particularly good, slightly better than the client is enough.

At the risk of sounding stupid, what exactly is a PP? This word appears all over the forums. All I can figure out from the contexts it appears in is that it's something very nasty?

Oh sorry, I don't even know what the Yellow Card is. I always thought SAYC and Standard were synonyms. I'll try not to reply to posts about SAYC in future, thanks.

This should teach me to use quotes when reply to people :-)

I like it when the hog is wrong :-) The post can't be about whether to ruff the heart or not, since you can't make it if you don't (edit: except for what sfi just said, oops). Something else that points to the finesse is that so far, East has only three HCP (he played the ♦Q and his pard played the ♣Q) yet he managed to find a response with only four hearts and a balanced hand, so he should have the queen of spades. Edit: and with what sfi said, then the only possibility to play for (if you don't want to assume West has three hearts) is the singleton 2 of spades.

The robot does not need a good hand to raise your suit, but does to bid a new suit. So he chose the bid he was allowed to make rather than pass.

It is also common to play that 1♥ 3♥ shows four hearts as well as an invitation. Therefore your second auction would show an invitation with four or more clubs and three hearts.

No. You cannot contain a whole system in a CC. The CC is just for the basic things. You are not supposed to memorise the CC either, only gain an appreciation of the opponent's basic methods so you are prepared. E.g. the opponents may play Precision, and you haven't discussed what you do over a Precision 1♣. Having the thing announced isn't going to help you if you didn't discuss it before play started - the opponents aren't going to let you have a quick chat in the middle of a hand. Announcements are only for the most basic of things, which you can get from glancing at the front page of a CC, not for alerts. It's announcements I am against, because it's your own responsibility to have an idea of your opponent's basic system before you start play. Alerts are so that an opponent knows the bid has an unusual meaning. He might ask, or if it is something basic [e.g. 1NT (2♦)] he might look at the CC rather than ask. Alerts are essential, because if the opponent does not play your system, he can't possibly have any idea that it is different from what it would mean if he had that auction.

You would have to look at their studies carefully. Perhaps in 1980 they chose a slightly different population of kids than in 2008.

So pre-balancing is excluded? Good to have a solid rule with your partner so you always know which is which :-)

How likely is it that when you apply to get a method added, they allow it? My partner and I would love to have a holiday in America and play all the events for a year but not being allowed to play our system which has been carefully crafted over some years is really putting us off. By the way is there a calendar on the ACBL website or elsewhere that shows which events use which convention chart?

Also if they were about to bid something like 1♦ 1♥ 2♦ 2NT 3NT, now they can safely not bother (for a tight 3NT to make, presumably they need good things happening in diamonds, so if 2♦ doesn't make neither will NT). However what about the auction (1♣) P (1♥) P (2♣) P P X If you wanted to make a takeout for spades and diamonds, you could have doubled previously. So would this be a penalty double?

Won't be useful most of the time, because opener doesn't care about queens and jacks in his non-suits. If he does care, he is balanced, and can bid his range, and let responder add the points together to decide what level they can bid to. Better to define a positive as something useful, e.g. at least one ace and king, or two kings and a useful queen.